The earliest Hurrians that we are able to recognize were encountered in the late third millennium BCE by the expansionist rulers of southern Mesopotamia. These Hurrians, who inhabited the northern and northeastern border regions of Mesopotamia, can be identified by their distinctive names. The exact limits of the area they occupied in this early period cannot be determined. Nevertheless, the relative rarity of Hurrian names in the texts from the northern Mesopotamian town of Gasur (later in antiquity to be called Nuzi, modern Yorghan Tepe) suggests that it lay to the south of the core Hurrian area in the third millennium.

Archaeologists Georgio and Marilyn Kelly Buccellati have identified Tell Mozan in northeastern Syria as the important late-third-millennium Hurrian capital of Urkesh. Urkesh's name was found on three fragmentary impressions of seals belonging to Tupkish, king of Urkesh.